As ExchangeWire previously documented in a Q&A with Dylan Collins, CEO of SuperAwesome, the child-safe marketing platform, the kids' digital market is burgeoning into a multi-billion-dollar opportunity. With the recent launch of REX, the world's first child-safe programmatic exchange, the opportunity to tap into this market has just become easier. And safer. ExchangeWire speak with Collins (pictured below) about the launch of REX and what this means for advertisers and publishers looking to target the under-13 market.

ExchangeWire: SuperAwesome have just launched REX – what is it and how does it work?

Dylan Collins: For the first time ever, REX makes it possible for advertisers across the world to programmatically engage with the kids’ audience in a fully COPPA-compliant, 100% kid-safe way. REX acts as a comprehensive kid-safety filter, sitting between the publisher and the exchange; it removes all non-compliant elements from each ad tag to ensure nothing can track users, before placing every creative through our ad content review process. Only then is it served through our COPPA-certified AwesomeAds platform, earning our SAFE AD watermark. All of this happens in real-time, allowing for a full programmatic flow, whilst ensuring compliance to all parties involved.

How does this differ from how advertisers and publishers have been working with SuperAwesome to date?

To date, brands have been accessing our content marketplace (300 million kids per month) via AwesomeAds on a direct deal or guaranteed basis. We've obviously scaled this up hugely; SuperAwesome is now used by hundreds of brands to deliver kid-safe advertising around the world. However, REX brings a step-change in scalability and performance. It allows brands to use many of the same automated workflows, which they've established for other audiences but which haven't previously been possible in the u13 space. Now that we've solved this issue, and can deliver it with 100% safety and COPPA compliance, we're seeing enormous demand, simply because it allows them to be more efficient.

The kids’ digital marketing industry is one that must be approached with caution, due to COPPA/GDPR regulations. Is the REX platform itself fully automated, or does it require a manual element to ensure regulations continue to be met?

SuperAwesome SAFE AD Watermark

SuperAwesome was founded specifically to build the COPPA/GDPR digital media infrastructure for the kids' sector, so everything we release is fully compliant by design. REX is part of AwesomeAds which (like everything else) has been certified COPPA-compliant by the FTC's safe harbour program (KidSAFE). But that's just one part, in order to earn our SAFE AD watermark (which appears on every ad served from our platform), every creative goes through our ad content review process (done by humans) to ensure that the ad is also appropriate for the u13 audience.

How do you expect the launch of REX and the launch partnership with Rubicon Project to grow the kids’ digital media market?

Dylan Collins, CEO, SuperAwesome

Budgets in the digital kids’ space are growing by 30-50% annually. This Q4 will be the biggest digital period for toy companies, movie companies, book publishers, and educational brands they've ever seen. REX gives them a truly kid-safe platform which allows them to comprehensively scale up their digital activities as more and more budget shifts to follow the eyeballs.

For advertisers and publishers alike to take advantage of trading programmatically within this market, what considerations do they need to make? Will this move help to clean up the issues of misallocation and safety control of ads shown to the under-13 market?

This is the very first time that the kids’ industry has had truly COPPA-compliant, kid-safe programmatic. It raises the bar for all brands, in terms of how they're running the kids media business – in the wake of the InMobi COPPA breach and the release of REX, we're already seeing a lot of technology audits starting. The FTC (and soon the EU) are demonstrably stepping up their prosecution of COPPA so there's simply no excuse for brands and media owners to not be compliant. The cleanup of this sector took an infrastructure company which was 100% dedicated to the kids market. SuperAwesome has now defined both the kid-safe ad category and the safety standard (SAFE AD) for u13 industry; and this is helping to drive digital opportunities for publishers and brands alike.